Blog:

Skitch for Mac Update: You Asked, We Listened

Posted by Andrew Sinkov on 28 Sep 2012

Posted by Andrew Sinkov on 28 Sep 2012

We’ve been listening closely to all of the great feedback and suggestions from the community since last week’s launch of the redesigned Skitch 2.0 for Mac. For our first update (2.0.1), we made sure to incorporate as many of those requests as possible.

Choose Your File Type

The Drag Me tab on the bottom of the Skitch window makes it incredibly easy to share your comments, ideas and annotations with friends and colleagues. Just grab the tab and drag the image into an email, your desktop or anywhere else.

In this update, we’ve added a file type selector into the Drag Me tab. This lets you choose the file type (PNG, JPG, GIF, TIFF, BMP) for the resulting file. Choose what you want and the image that you drop will be in that format.

Smarter Screen Snap

Whenever you snap your screen, Skitch pops up a confirmation that lets you modify your selected area or change it to specific dimensions. Very often, the area that you selected initially is the area that you want, so we now place the Capture button of the popup wherever your mouse happens to be. A quick second click gets the job done.

Improved Sync Options

In this update, we’re giving you more control over the Evernote sync. In the Sync Preferences, there’s now a dropdown next to Save Skitch Notes to Evernote. The options are:

Always: Whenever you create a new Skitch note, the previous one is saved and synced to Evernote

Ask: Whenever you create a new Skitch note, you will be asked whether to sync the note with Evernote

Never ask: Whenever you create a new Skitch note, the previous one is discarded and replaced with the new one

When you choose either Ask or Never Ask, a Save button appears at the top of the Skitch window. If you want to save your Skitch notes to Evernote, just click Save.

Flip and Rotate

There’s a new Image menu that lets you flip and rotate your Skitch notes either clockwise or counterclockwise. Every one of these functions also gets a keyboard shortcut.

Flip: SHIFT + CMD + F

Rotate clockwise: CMD + R

Rotate counterclockwise: SHIFT + CMD + R

Multi-select in the Library

The Library, those four squares in the top right corner, is your window into Skitch notes that are synchronized with Evernote. We enabled multi-select in the Library so that you can easily delete unwanted images.

New Keyboard Shortcuts

We’ve added a new keyboard shortcut — Command + / — that makes sharing a URL to a Skitch note quick and easy. This shortcut shares the note publicly and places the URL to that note into your clipboard. Then, you simply paste that URL into an IM, email, blog post, or forum and you’re done.

Change Arrow Directions

By default, when you draw an arrow in Skitch, the mouse cursor is attached to the arrowhead. Many people prefer to draw their arrows in the opposite direction, tail first. Now you can do that by holding down the Option key as you draw the arrow.

More improvements

We’ve made a bunch of other improvements to the app and many more are on the way. Thanks everyone for your great, constructive comments. We’re listening. We’ve also made the old version of Skitch available for those that want it. Stay tuned, our app to help you communicate and share your ideas visually is just getting started.

There are a couple of other features that I think would be awesome. 1.) if Skitch could stay running in the menu bar for quick access, 2.) be able to intercept the default OS X screenshot commands. That way you can use the default commands to take a screenshot and it would open up the screenshot in Skitch.

Andrew Sinkov—

Thanks for the suggestions. There’s lots more to come.

Chuck Whiteley—

I will wait to update until I can get it out of my dock and back into the menu bar.

Dennis—

Amen for that !

That`s one of the request most people asked back.

Colin—

I WISH I had realized that it was no longer in the menu bar before I upgraded. How on earth did that feature get removed in the 2.0 release? Such a backwards step that totally ruins a normal workflow.

Mike—

Please add the menubar icon back and let us remove it from the Dock.

esaruoho—

So.. Basically, Skitch will never upload to a FTP-site ever again, all Skitch-users are stuck in Evernote-land?

Russell Greenwood—

+1

Eric—

Still no ability to set the shortcut to create the snap?????

@dr3do—

Are you a Macuser? Then you can (meanwhile) define a system wide shortcut for that. Do you know it works?

leftistelf—

You listened? Then where’s the PDF output file type?

John—

I am also really missing the PDF export function, most used part of tool for me. Please bring back.

Aaron—

The most important thing that I rely on which Skitch 2 removed was the ability for shared pictures to automatically have a direct link to an image I can use with GitHub and other places that need a direct URL. In fact, I can’t get such a URL at all without jumping through a few hoops! PLEASE add this back in!

Wouter Meyers—

That’s exactly what our team uses the Skitch app for as well. We won’t switch to Skitch 2.x before this functionality has been implemented.

Thanks for making v1 available again in the meantime!

mtrono—

Direct image link is critical for software teams who embed images in wikis or issue trackers. I realize it circumvents the Evernote workflow. But you’re just creating a walled garden that many of us cannot leverage.

Angela Booth—

Excellent, thank you. I appreciate being able to choose the file type, and decide not to send the screen clip to Evernote. Wonderful. 🙂

Michael K.—

Uploading to FTP, etc. is a *must* for this application. I realize Evernote owns it now, but restricting uploads to Evernote only is thoroughly crippling. Skitch used to be a great all-around tool. Now it’s just an overblown Evernote add-on.

Sindre—

I’ll wait until I can have it in the menubar.

Mattias—

You completely destroyed Skitch. It used to be one of my favorite mac apps but now I use Droplr instead. No menubar shortcut in 2.0? Why?

Also, I choose to upload all my old skitch images to evernote. They did not “fit” in the free version. Now I get error messages about sync issues every 15 minutes. So annoying that I can’t use it no longer.

How can I dowload the old, perfect, version?

Kasey Fleisher Hickey—

You can download Skitch 1.0 here: https://evernote.com/skitch/

J Antolak—

You could also roll back if you have a time machine backup.

android user—

Will these changes be coming to the android platform as well?

Jason P.—

The latest version of Skitch is a step backwards. What I loved about this tool was it’s minimalistic, lightweight interface that fronted a very powerful image capture and annotation tool. I can’t believe that getting rid of the menubar option was a highly-requested feature.

Reiner—

I still don’t like the new crop feature. It doesn’t work. The frame moves much slower than the mouse. Useless. Please give us back the old crop functionality – it was JUST nice and easy to use.
Please!!

polwirtz—

Agree, this is one of the pains that I wait for to be changed back!ü

polwirtz—

I want to collect my skitched notes by subjects that I chose, NOT by the app that created them — and easily change the note nnames.
Thanks

Waitinmg also for a 1.0.13 🙂 !

Thiel—

Where’s the countdown snap function? Used that all the time.

Also, burying size option under the color selector is bad UI.

JV—

The countdown timer is huge for doing web screenshots when you need to show menu options and the like. I had to reinstall the old Skitch just to get this feature back. I could probably live with 2.0 if that one feature was added.

Vincent Polisi—

The title to this post should be, “You Asked, We Listened……and then ignored you…….AGAIN”.

Where’s FTP/SFTP, Menu Bar, PDF, save to FTP & Evernote, same speed as previous version of Skitch and a dozen other things?

ex Skitch-user—

+1

Simon—

+1

Seems like most of the features of skitch, light weight, easy uploading of images to arbitrary locations.

The new UI is not an improvement over the old either. Menubar item gone.

Disappointed and trying to roll back.

Manuel Schneider—

+1

alex—

still will not take a pic of what is in a window on the Dashboard on a mac, just takes screenshot of what is behind, worked ok before but now does not 🙁

Jack Zigon—

I’m so disappointed by Skitch 2.0. The interface is harder to use, has fewer functions and tied me to Evernote.

I’m upgrading to version 1.0.12.

Spandrel—

I’ll try 2.x again only if transparent annotations come back. That was vital to making Skitch what it was

Peter—

I installed the latest update and immediately find it so much harder to use than the 1.x version.
I could not find the cropping feature by simply drag and drop the borders of the image and numerous other ones. While I like the new white design, I find it too “clunky” compared to the previous very compact and functional one. Of course, I agree with most of the people that the option is needed to only show in the menu bar.

Very sad development but fortunately, I was able to download and install the previous version.

I will hold off updating in the hope Skitch will become the worlds best screen capture tool again.

Terence—

I suggest to abandon the project 2.0 and return to develop the previous version.
Hoping you choose to focus on a v 1.0.13

Gael—

I’m missing the PDF export the most. It’s the only format that allowed the recipient of the image to copy and paste my notes. I use it to communicate colours, spacing, type sizes of my designs to developers and clients alike.

Also could you make the type more elegant? those huge outline+shadow are horrible (that’s not new to v2 though)

<3 evernote and skitch

Jeff—

I need to be able to save to a notebook that is not sync’d. I don’t mind the snapshots going into evernote but I can’t let them be sync’d to the cloud for security reasons (corporate dictates). Continuing to stay on v1…

Mike—

Why can’t names of images captured in Skitch be edited in Evernote? Why should I have to open another application if I want to change the name of a note while I’m in Evernote? Am I missing something here? To make the whole thing even more ridiculous, when I change the note name in Skitch it doesn’t update in Evernote when I sync them…

Bobby Moore—

Please bring back the ability for custom colors and set transparency!

Jan Rychter—

The 2.0 version is still a huge step backwards. Features are missing, usability is lower, it keeps bombarding me with popup windows asking about evernote stuff which I really, really don’t care about — it simply gets in the way of getting things done.

I tried really hard to use evernote. Several times. Each and every time there was just too much ‘friction’ — seemingly minor usability problems, lack of general taste, lack of polish, things that you might discount, but that actually make using the product so much harder. Now Skitch starts displaying the same traits.

What you should do is:

a) go back to Skitch 1.0,

b) make the Skitch design team work on improving Evernote, not the other way around!

I don’t find Evernote particularly friction-producing. I’ve used it for years and like it a lot. But the new Skitch is a sad development. You took a simple, powerful tool that we (and you) absolutely loved and made it into a complicated, clunky tool with fewer features. As a long-time podcast listener, I know you guys are smart and well-intentioned. But, boys, you blew this transition. I agree with the others who suggest you start with the old Skitch — make it work as seamlessly with Evernote as you like, but don’t remove all its other great capabilities.

Eric Nordstrom—

I believe the team that worked on Skitch 2.0 is COMPLETELY, 100% out of touch with how/why so many people used the original Skitch. The changes (and the attempt to correct them) run counter to everything that once made Skitch great. It doesn’t make sense why Evernote bought Skitch if their intention was to build an entirely new application.

I have two main issues:

If I want to adjust my crop and capture area, I’ll select it from a menu….I can’t stand being asked every single time if I want to adjust my dimensions. I don’t care how close you move the dialog box to the cursor. That’s just plain stupid.

You’ve granted us the ability to turn off the Evernote tie-in (which was illogical in the first place…surely you guys know that) but there’s still no local history. It’s a crippled program.

I love Evernote but after seeing what you did to Skitch, I’m certainly looking for alternatives. You’ve very effectively demonstrated that you’re out of touch with your user-base and ignorant when it comes to good UI development.

I paid for Skitch, use it all throughout my day…personal and professional use. I’m constantly hitting cmd-shift-5. I’m entirely grateful that you’ve made the original Skitch available, but how long before you flip the upgrade switch and close it down?

Brent—

Mad props to Evernote for re-releasing Skitch 1.0 https://evernote.com/skitch/ (smaller font under the new links). Still, I’ve gotta agree with everyone here, in order to preserve Skitch’s good name can you re-brand 2.0 as Skutch or Skatch?

Carola—

Hm. Many improvements for archiving and sharing the screens.
But…
I used Skitch a lot for documentation purposes. I used the function to get the whole window by url and the timer (show mouseovers!) quite a lot.

So I just re-install the old version now.

Please think about re-inventing these functions – they can save a real lot of time.

chemel—

love the new integration with evernote! good job.
i am a heavy user and the best improvement i like is, getting rid of the adds!

unfortunately i found a small bug in sharing my just created skitch with others
by email. look here what i found.

thx and keep on the good work. love your products
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zo_UUYbOaU

Frank J. Oswald—

I upgraded to Mac 10.8.2 and my “old” Skitch stopped working. So I upgraded to the new Evernote/Skitch. Where did the screen grabs I saved to the old Skitch go and how can I get them back?

Bozena—

I am so disappointed with the new version! The main feature for me was making PDF and commenting on them. PLEASE BRING THE PDF FORMAT BACK!

moviewiseman—

The prime feature that I used Skitch for, they went and deleted — saving screen shots to PDF. This is not a case of a bunch of incompetent developers totally stuffing up a great program. No one could have been that out of touch with their users. No, this was a calculated commercial move by Evernote to purposely cripple this once-useful software. Look, if Evernote wants to cripple the software, fine, it’s their commercial prerogative, but I hate it when the developers couch it terms that they’ve listened to their users.